The invention disclosed herein relates generally to computerized trading in financial interests, and in particular to computerized auctions and sales of financial interests, including stocks, options, futures, forwards contracts, commodities, and fixed income securities, including but not limited to corporate, government, and municipal bonds. The invention also relates to computer implementations of new or improved trading features, particularly useful in auction and non-auction transactions in financial interests using computer networks.
Electronic trading and electronic assisted trading of securities and other financial interests has been progressing for a number of years. Perhaps the greatest advances have been made in electronic stock trading systems. Other advances have been made in the trading of electricity forwards (see, e.g., co-pending U.S. application Ser. No. 09/584,045, titled “Electronic Trading System For Electricity Forwards, filed May 30, 2000, and Ser. No. 09/476,935, titled “System And Method For Implementing Foreign Exchange Currency Forwards, filed Dec. 30, 1999, both of which are assigned to the assignee of this application).
Bond trading was traditionally accomplished by individual brokers dealing with buyers and sellers by telephone and later also by facsimile. Recently electronic bond trading systems have become commercially available for use in the primary municipal bond market. One such system is the Bloomberg “Deal-O-Matic System” (see “Grant's Municipal Bond Issuer”, Vol. 2, No. 14, Jul. 16, 1998). Prior to that, Bloomberg LP provided a system (“Municipal Bid Wanted” or MBW) for electronic assisted trading for secondary market municipal bonds and corporate bonds. That system is described in the article “What Corporate Traders Could Learn from Munis,” published in “Bloomberg” Magazine, Sep. 16, 1993 at pages 16-17.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,915,209, titled “Bond Trading System” and issued to David Lawrence on Jun. 22, 1999, discloses a municipal bond trading system which conducts a private electronic auction of bid wanteds between a market maker and prospective bidders. Bid wanteds are distributed, or transmitted, to prospective bidders. It is believed that the system described in this patent has never been commercialized. A summary of existing electronic bond trading systems is contained in “eCommerce in the U.S., Fixed Income Markets”, “The 1999 Review of Electronic Transaction Systems”, The Bond Market Association, November, 1999. (Available from Bondmarkets.com's web site at www.bondmarkets.com.)
The invention disclosed herein continues the advance of electronic trading systems for financial interests, and introduces new or improved features useful in electronic trading.